


The Way I Used To Be

by lazaefair



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 12:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12132588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazaefair/pseuds/lazaefair
Summary: There are two types of beings in the universe: those who dance, and those who do not.Three dances Gamora has shared in her life.





	The Way I Used To Be

Bend, arch, kick, sway.

“Yes, precisely so,” the Other hisses as they track stately circles over the polished obsidian floor of the lesser training arena. “Your father will be pleased. Very pleased.”

Her skin crawls, ever so faintly, wherever he touches her. No matter. Thanos has required that Gamora learn the one thousand formal dances of diplomacy and ceremony of the galaxy's leading civilizations, as his chosen representative and most beautiful child. Thanos requires perfection. Therefore Gamora will deliver perfection.

It's not so different from fighting. Read your partner. Lead your partner. Move to the thunder of your heart and the spaces between your breaths. Program each learned step into your bones until they come as easily as the killing stroke. Make coyly calibrated small talk. Spin to a graceful stop when the music ends. Bow.

It's nothing at all like fighting.

*

"My lady," Taneleer Tivan drawls, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. He has soft lips, and he looks her up and down under deceptively sleepy eyelids. Gamora wonders if he's ever fully raised those lids in the entirety of his lifespan. "Would you gift me with the honor of this dance?"

They sweep onto the ballroom floor, sure and fluid, he with the confidence of uncountable millennia of experience, she with the confidence of hard-earned perfection. 

Bend, arch, kick, sway. Coelura silk cascades from her hips and arms, shimmering and shifting colors moving across her robe in time with music and mood. She shines even among the be-plumed finery of the Shi’ar elite.

“The Orb,” Tivan murmurs after several rounds, his hand resting deliberately on the length of silk on her shoulder.

She twirls him into a spin, then reels him in again. “My sources place it on the cloud world Praxius IX. We leave to investigate it in three days.”

“Excellent.” Ancient as he is, he can’t or doesn’t care to conceal the glint of greed in his eyes. When they come to the end of the round, he pulls her out of the line without missing a step, and bows low. “May I say, my lady, your dancing is as superb as the rest of you. I offer a thousand gratitudes for the privilege of sharing this interlude.”

Four billion units, Gamora reminds herself. Four billion units and the sweet satisfaction of betrayal. “Believe me, Collector, the privilege was mine.”

*

“God, Gamora, it’s been like half the night. You’re makin’ me freeze to death just looking at you. Come back to the fire, please?”

Nanotech keeps her flesh functional and metabolizing at a sufficient rate to endure arctic conditions with relative ease. She doesn’t move from her post at the mouth of the ice cave. “Someone needs to keep watch.”

“But baby, it’s cold outside.”

“I’m not your baby,” she says automatically, because the thing between them may no longer be unspoken, but it is only very newly spoken still.

She hears him sigh behind her, and rustling as he turns over in his sleep sack. It will be a long night. Four standard hours until they miss their check-in, another hour for the Quadrant to arrive in the system and Kraglin to bring it into orbit around the planet, then gods know how many hours for the rest of the Guardians to get down to the surface, evade local security forces, and track Peter and Gamora to their precise location in the northern planetary regions where Peter crashed their stolen surface-hopper - conveniently taking out communication systems _and_ emergency beacon in one blow.

Another hour passes. She learned patience over the grinding years because it was required of her, but...she’s not enjoying this. At all.

“We really gotta stop meeting like this,” Peter says. Gamora turns to find him coming up behind her, two sleep sacks wrapped around his shoulders like a demented silvery cape.

“What are you doing?” She shoves at his shoulder, too acutely aware of the Terran endurance thresholds she’d memorized from the Xandarian Xeno Institute file after the incident with Ego. “It’s dangerous for you out here. Get back to the fire.”

“You first,” Peter says, planting his feet. They glare at each other, until Peter drops his eyes and scratches the back of his head. “I, uh...I missed you.”

Gamora glares at him a moment more. “You shouldn’t be so quick to admit that kind of weakness to anybody, Quill,” she says, but she’s reaching for him anyway.

“You’re not just anybody. Keep trying to tell you that,” Peter says, opening his arms and letting her settle against his chest before he closes the embrace, draping the sleep sacks around them. She turns her core temperature up a little higher than normal, which will burn through calories - but. Sheltered inside survival-grade insulating material, her ear pressed to his heart, her arms wrapped around the solidity of flesh and bone that contains that heart, warmth radiating through them both - a kind of peace shivers through her cold limbs. She can’t bring herself to regret it.

Then Peter starts humming. 

Just the melody at first, but by now those Awesome Mixes have been indelibly imprinted onto the Guardians through Peter’s specific brand of indoctrination through annoyance. _But then I fooled around and fell in love_ floats through her mind unbidden, and it’s her turn to sigh.

_“Free, on my own is the way I used to be_ \- c’mon, you know this part - _Ah, but since I met you baby, love's got a hold on me--”_

“I’m not your baby,” Gamora says again, just to make that clear, even as she begins to shift her weight from leg to leg in a timed pattern that happens to coincide with the tempo of the song.

Peter’s heart beats faster. She looks up at his face - yes, as she expected, it’s now graced with possibly the goofiest smile she’s ever witnessed on a lifeform not stoned out of their gourd on bliss sticks. She sighs again, but doesn’t stop what she’s doing, and lets herself hold on to him as they sway together into the night.

_Fooled around and fell in love_  
_I fell in love, I fell in love, yes I did_

**Author's Note:**

> So happy to just fucking finish something and post it. I'm over on Tumblr under the same name, posting about Marvel and Star Wars; join me in the multifandom pile.


End file.
